


It's lovely down in the woods today

by QueenOfCarrotFlowers



Series: Carrot's Horror Stories [20]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Discussions of Past Abuse, F/M, HEA, Monsters, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 12:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers
Summary: Rey lives in a small rural town, beholden to her cruel former guardian Plutt for her livelihood. She storms off her shift one day and encounters a strange man in the woods. She attacks him, but then he promises a permanent solution to her "problem".A soft monster AU
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Carrot's Horror Stories [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175285
Comments: 25
Kudos: 71
Collections: Reylo After Dark, Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts), Spooky Gems





	It's lovely down in the woods today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theselittlethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theselittlethings/gifts), [savethespacewhales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savethespacewhales/gifts), [van1lla_v1lla1n](https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/gifts).



> The summary is [this prompt](https://twitter.com/theselittlefics/status/1276552397213642754) from theselittlethings, based on a moodboard by savethespacewhales, and brought to my attention by vanilla_villain37, so I'm gifting it to all of them. I made Kylo a monster, but he's a soft one, I hope that's okay. Thanks so much for the excellent prompt!
> 
> Thanks to annaregina for the beta 💕
> 
> If you have issues with specific types of monsters you can skip to the end and I'll spoil what kind of monster Kylo is in this fic.

She threw the Harris wrench to the ground. It landed with a clang that echoed through the garage, then skittered across the concrete to settle under a shelf. Plutt took a step towards her and growled, “Girl…” a warning that Rey didn’t need to hear twice. Before he could get any closer she turned on her heel and stormed out, her steps quickening to a run as soon as she hit the street.

Rey had thought about running before, but thinking about it and actually doing it were two different things. In her mind, when she’d considered it - during pauses at work, or in the calm times before drifting off the sleep - it had felt romantic, like a child running away to join the circus. In practice it was sudden, and terrifying. One moment she was on her back in the garage, Plutt looming over her, his fist clenched, his breath ragged. He was going to hit her again, or he was going to pick her up off the floor, and neither option appealed. She had the advantage of quickness, so she scuttled backwards, hopped up, threw the wrench, and ran out the door, leaving the man to bellow behind her.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much to run to. The town was small, just a few sad buildings on the edge of a forest. There was the garage itself, where Rey worked for Plutt in perpetual servitude, forced to stay on even though she’d aged out of the system years before and he was no longer technically her foster father. There was the diner, where Maz held court with Rose and Finn under her watchful eye. Rey could go there, but Maz was small and Plutt was big and mean. Maz would do what she could and Finn and Rose would help, but they had a new baby and couldn’t afford to get hurt. Plutt had that advantage, and Rey wouldn’t do that to any of them. The Pawn Shop was another option. Old Man Solo liked Rey, had even offered her a job once, but for some reason she’d been unwilling to accept it. Fear of the unknown, maybe. Fear of change. Solo was more of a match for Plutt, but they didn’t call him _Old Man_ for nothing, either. Another unfair match. Advantage Plutt.

The options in town were slim, so after a quick jog down one street, and then another, constantly glancing over her shoulder to make sure Plutt wasn’t chasing her, Rey cut down a driveway and through an overgrown backyard, and ran into the woods.

The woods were technically a national forest with a fancy name, but Rey couldn’t be bothered to think about that right now. What was important was that there was shelter in the woods, and food - if you knew where to look - and that Rey figured that she could be quite comfortable there for a few days at least. And that was all she needed, a few days for Plutt to calm down. He probably wouldn’t pay her for the days she missed, but it was unlikely he’d say anything either. In the meantime she could relax - relatively - in the comfort of nature. The weather had been nice, not too cool for early October, and she didn’t think that there was any rain forecast for the week. There was an old tree in there, dead and hollowed at the roots. She’d found it back in the summer, when she’d spend long Sunday afternoons wandering the woods and thinking about running away and living there. The tree had been quite the find, it wasn’t far from a stream and it was big enough to sleep in. She just had to find it. It had been a while.

It was still the afternoon but the woods seemed darker than usual, dimmer, as though there was a filter over the sky although the sky outside of the woods had been a clear and cloudless blue. Rey noticed the dimness on the periphery of her mind, the tiny sliver that wasn’t occupied by thoughts of immediate survival. Would there be fish in the stream, this time of season? Would she be able to determine which berries were good to eat and which would poison her? She was fairly sure the tree was down this hill and on the right… but there was another hill, deeper in, and maybe it was there instead? She was off the path, the only guidance she had now were her own memories and those were blurred by her fight with Plutt.

Maybe it was this hill, after all. She had just started down, eyes on her feet to help keep her from sliding on the slippery fallen leaves, when she walked right into a tree. Only it wasn’t a tree - it was a man, and he had black leather boots, worn at the toe, which was all she could see at first. Her head snapped up, giving her an impression of _large_ and of _dark_ , and her eyes finally settled on a face. _Ugly_ was her first impression of the face. The man’s hair was dark and hung in lanks around his ears and over his forehead; it hadn’t been washed or cut in a good while. His skin was pale, not pale like china or like milk, but a slightly yellow-grey pale that reminded her of cooked pork left in the refrigerator too long, and it was dotted with moles. He had black hair on his face, but it was sparse and patchy, like a dead caterpillar across his upper lip and another one smeared across his chin. He smelled, not bad but organic, like sweat and dirt and the inside of a tree. He smelled like he belonged there.

Rey felt the man’s hands wrap around her biceps, and that was all she needed to break out of that particular stupor. She yelled - never mind Plutt, there’s no way he followed her all the way in - and pushed her fists against his chest, brought her knee up in a violent move that made contact with some part of his lower body - his thigh, his stomach, between his legs, she had no idea. He grunted and his hands loosened just enough for her to twist out of his grasp, lowering herself to the ground and scooting between his feet, using the slope of the hill to her advantage. He was coming down after her, heavy footsteps crunching through the underbrush, steady despite the slant of the hill. He was in no hurry. 

At the bottom of the hill Rey paused briefly, just to look. This did look familiar, and if she was right the tree she sought should be a few yards to the right, just up the stream. If she was fast enough she could hide there, and the strange man wouldn’t know where she’d gone, and he’d give up and go somewhere else, and leave her alone. So she ran, so intent on her prize that she didn’t see the giant webs threaded between the trees before she stumbled into them.

“ _Fuck!_ ” she yelled. She lifted her hand in an attempt to pull the web out of her mouth, but the stuff was so strong she couldn’t reach it; she couldn’t bend her elbow, nor could she straighten her arm. Her other arm was caught down by her hip. She tried backing out of the web but her feet were stuck tight, too. And she knew better than to struggle, she’d watched enough flies get caught in the webs that clustered in the windows of Plutt’s garage. She knew that struggling wouldn’t help her get out of this web, and it would serve to catch the attention of whatever spider had weaved them. She’d never seen anything like it before; the responsible party couldn't be pleasant. So she stilled, and waited for those steady footsteps, and hoped that he would be willing to help her.

He came up behind her and stopped, and then he stood there quietly, not saying anything. His quiet unnerved Rey, and she bit her tongue to keep herself from saying something. She wanted him to speak first, although she didn’t know why. The dimness of the woods closed even further, and sound was muted. She could hear birds chirping, and the burbling of the stream, some small animal puttering in the underbrush, but they came from far away. The only sound she could hear with any distinction was the breathing of the man behind her, and her own heartbeat.

“That was rude,” he said finally, some long minutes later. His voice was deep and unused, like something from a cave. 

“I didn’t expect anyone here,” Rey answered, her voice slightly muffled around the web that stuck to her lower lip. She tested the bonds again, but they were as sticky and tight as before. “I thought I was alone. You scared me.”

“You surprised me.” His response came quickly and was edged with an emotion that Rey thought might be fear. “I didn’t expect anyone here, either. What are you doing here?”

“I ran away,” she said. “I had a fight with my boss and I was afraid he was going to hurt me, so I ran away.”

“He did hurt you, didn’t he,” the man said. “You have a bruise on your cheek. Did he do that?” The man’s voice was calm, too calm, and it made her shiver.

“He did.”

“I’m sorry. It looks painful.”

She did her best to shrug. “It’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

She heard him shift behind her. “What will you do if I let you go?”

She scoffed. “Are you really going to leave me here?” He didn’t answer her, and eventually she spoke again. “I don’t want to go back, at least not yet. I was looking for a hollow tree, there’s one not far from here. I thought I could sleep there, stay in the woods for a few days. Enough time for Plutt to calm down.”

“Ah, Plutt,” the man said, and something sharp cut through the webbing around her. Scissors, or a knife; he moved quickly, whatever it was that he was using to cut the webbing, Rey couldn't see it very well. 

“You know him?” The man held her elbow and helped her back out of the tangled webs, and she was able to turn and face him again. He looked better on second glance. His cheeks were a bit pinker, and his eyes, which at first had only registered as dark, were instead a lighter shade of brown, more like honey than like dirt. 

“I know he’s not a good man.” Rey nodded, and waited, but the man seemed disinclined to say any more than that.

“I’m Rey,” she said, holding out her hand to him. He looked at her hand for a moment before taking it in his own. His hand was large, and warm, and soft; not soft like skin, but soft like a peach. Furry. Rey moved her thumb to stroke it against his hand, and he let go quickly, letting his arm drop back to his side.

“I’m Kylo. I know that tree you’re talking about. I’ve been staying there myself.”

“Oh.” It was a small space, with barely enough room for her. It would be too small for him, and definitely too small for both of them, even if she was inclined to share. “Okay.” She glanced back over her shoulder, into the now ragged webbing. The tree was in there, anyway, surrounded by the webs. “But how do you stay there with all the webs? Don’t the spiders bother you?”

Kylo shrugged. “The spiders aren’t so bad, once you get to know them. They leave me alone. They’ll leave you alone.” He stared at her, and his eyes fell to her cheek - the bruised one, the one that Plutt had smacked earlier. He lifted his hand, but did not touch her. Then he swallowed, and moved his jaw as though he was chewing something. He lowered his hand, and formed it into a fist. He was, truly, very interesting to watch. Rey felt as though she could see his thinking process play out on his body. 

“What if you didn’t have to worry about Plutt?” He asked.

Rey chuckled, folded her arms - still sticky from the webbing - across her chest. “That would be pretty awesome, really. He’s like a giant thumb - very hard to get out from under.”

“I understand. I had someone like that in my life.”

“You did, huh? What did you do about them?”

“I cut it off. Him. Uh, the thumb. Continuing your analogy.”

Rey chuckled, not quite believing the conversation was real. “So you have experience? Uh, cutting thumbs?”

“I do.”

“Will you teach me?”

“I will.”

* * *

They waited until a few hours past sundown to leave the woods. In the meantime Kylo slipped through the webs - he seemed immune to their stickiness, which Rey found strange, but maybe he was just used to them. Everything about the day was strange, anyway. He came out with food, just a few cans of ravioli, which they heated in a little fire. They ate while they waited for time to pass, and they talked. Kylo asked Rey about herself, and she insisted she had nothing to say, that she was nobody, but he encouraged her with nods and quiet questions as she told him about being abandoned by her parents, shunted from family to family before finally ending up with Plutt. She told him about books she’d read and ideas she’d had, and he listened to her with an intensity that was as unfamiliar as it was captivating.

Kylo opened up about himself, too. He was born in town, but he’d left before Rey was sent to Plutt; he was a good ten years older than Rey at least, which surprised her. He seemed ageless, a child and an old man wrapped up in one strange body. 

“My parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they sent me to my Uncle first. That was fine, until it wasn’t, and then I went to stay with, uh…”

“The thumb?”

The corners of his mouth quirked, a twitch in the firelight. He looked better in the dark; more comfortable, more real. The orange light washed out his strange coloring, and filled in his patchy facial hair. “Exactly. The thumb. Last year the thumb got too heavy, so I cut it off. I like that analogy, thanks for it.” She nodded, her mouth full of slimy cheese and tangy tomato sauce. “I’ve been here in the woods for a while.”

“What have you been doing here?” She set the empty can down by her foot and wiped her hands on her jeans.

“Waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, staring into the fire and sounding small, lost. “Just waiting for something. Maybe it’s today I’ve been waiting for. Maybe it’s you.”

Rey’s breath caught in her chest, her heart stuttered. “Nobody’s ever waited for me before.”

He stared at her, eyes flitting from her eyes to her mouth and back, then he gazed behind him, back up the hill. “It’s time to go.”

At this time of night Rey knew that Plutt would be past dinner, and he’d be back in the garage doing the paperwork that he didn’t have time to work on during the day. As they approached the glow of the open door Kylo reached for Rey’s hand, and she held it tight, wondering again at the strange peach fuzziness of his skin. She wondered if all his skin felt like that. She wondered, briefly, how that fuzz would feel against the flat of her tongue. It was a more pleasant thought than wondering what they would be doing to Plutt in a few short minutes.

“Let me take care of it,” Kylo had insisted, when she’d asked what the plan was, and she was very happy to follow his lead.

“Wait out here,” he whispered, “I’ll bring him out to you.” He gave her hand a squeeze, and stepped into the light, leaving her in the shadows. He walked quietly through the garage, his steps oddly quick and short, and he disappeared into the office at the far end of the room.

Rey wasn’t about to wait; she wanted to see, so as soon as he entered the office, she made her own way across the room, her own quiet footsteps. Halfway to the office door there was a sound, a grunt - Plutt, she thought - but no other noise, which surprised her. She ran the last few steps to the door, and gasped at the sight she found there.

Plutt was sitting at his desk, which sat perpendicular to the door, the front of it pushed up against the wall. The office was a wreck, as usual. Just a small, windowless square, plain concrete walls lined with metal shelves covered by excess detritus that had been relocated from the garage proper. The old wooden desk was piled with papers, receipts and forms and who knows what. Plutts chair was a huge wooden thing, with thick legs and wide armrests sufficient to support his bulk. He was leaning back in the chair, his head fallen back, and he’d have been staring at the ceiling if he was alive.

Rey was very sure that Plutt was no longer alive.

Kylo was bent over the man, and Rey couldn't tell what he was doing because his head was in the way. But then he shifted, and his movement was accompanied by an unpleasant squelching sound. Kylo had apparently heard her gasp, and turned his head to face her. There was something wrong with him, with his mouth; it had opened up, but extended to cover the entire bottom half of his face. His teeth were there, set in pink gums, but they pointed towards the ceiling and a large set of black pincers pushed out from the hole in his face. As she watched in horror drops of red liquid dripped from the pincers and joined a small puddle already forming on the floor, and Kylo’s face quickly folded back in on itself, leaving him looking exactly like he did before, and also terrified.

“I told you to wait outside!” He took a step towards Rey, but stopped when she took a step away.

“What the _fuck_!” Hysteria was rising and she didn’t want to be afraid of Kylo, but she was. “What the fuck. Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’d never hurt you, Rey. You can run away if you want to. I’ll take him. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”

“No,” Rey answered. “I don’t think I want to leave you. There’s too much of that… too much leaving. But what’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

“Not exactly. I, uh, have a condition,” he said, and something about the way he said it gave her pause. “I didn’t want this, but I have it, so I might as well use it. Please.”

“How?”

“It was Snoke. My, uh, thumb.”

“He did this to you?” 

Kylo nodded, tears just beginning to shine in his eyes. 

“He was a scientist, had some pretty strange ideas about genetic mutation. I thought he cared about me, but I was just an experiment to him.”

“Jesus. The worst Plutt ever did was punch me.” She took a step closer, into the frame of the door, and Kylo took a step closer to her. “Well, he locked me in a closet for a day once when I was fifteen. That was pretty bad.”

“I’m so sorry he did that to you, Rey.”

“Thank you, Kylo. I’m okay, but… thank you. Did you kill him?”

“Not yet. The venom knocks him out for a while. I’m going to carry him back to the woods and, well…”

“Do what spiders do?”

“That’s my plan.” He turned back to Plutt. “More ravioli for you.”

“I do like ravioli.”

Rey stood back and watched as Kylo laid Plutt out on the ground and wrapped him up in webbing that shot out from glands in his wrists. Then he slung the man over his shoulder and they headed out. They were only a few blocks from the woods, and it was late enough, the town small enough that they weren’t too worried about running into anyone. 

Now that they were past the initial reveal, and it was clear that Kylo wasn’t about to hurt her, Rey was curious.

“Does it hurt? Being a spider?”

“Not really. It hurt when it was happening at first. I know that the thing with my face looks awful, but it doesn’t hurt me to do it.”

“That’s good.” They stepped up a curb and made their way past the old warehouse, long abandoned after the train line cut their town off as a stop. “Are other parts of you, uh, spider-like? I noticed your skin.”

“Yeah, I’m kinda fuzzy all over, and the stuff on my face does what it does. I shave when I can, but it’s hard, living in the woods.”

“Do you have spider legs?” Rey was glad it was dark, so Kylo couldn’t see her blush.

“Oh, uh, yeah. They aren’t very big and they don’t do much. They hang out around my torso. Here.” He stopped and turned towards her, lifting his arms up to expose his middle, keeping a tight hold on Plutt so he didn’t fall off of Kylo’s shoulder. His black shirt was loose, and as Rey watched something under the shirt moved, ripples of motion up and down Kylo’s sides and along his front. “They aren’t very nice.”

“I bet they’re nice. They’re part of you, aren’t they?”

Kylo shook his head and started walking again. “I’m not nice. I’m a monster.”

“You’re nice to me.” Rey grabbed his arm, the one that wasn’t balancing Plutt, and forced him to stop. She growled up at him. “If you are a monster, then you’re _my_ monster.”

“I’ll be your monster,” Kylo whispered, and Rey realized then that they were standing very close together indeed. She stared at him, and he stared right back at her, and she was considering closing the gap with there was a shout from the corner.

“Hey! Rey, is that you? You okay?” The person proceeded to amble up the street towards them.

“Shit, that’s Old Man Solo! Kylo, you should run, I’ll delay him, make something up. Please don’t hurt him.” But instead of running Kylo straightened his shoulders, and turned around to face the man coming towards them on the dark sidewalk.

“Hey, Han,” Rey said, as casually as she could, giving him a little wave and stepping in front of Kylo. “My friend and I are just, ah, taking a walk.”

“Little dark for a walk,” Han Solo answered, slowing his steps as he approached. “Little late.”

Rey was surprised when Kylo stepped out from behind her and said, “Hey, Dad.” 

From the look on Old Man Solo’s face, he was surprised too.

“Ben!” He said. “I heard about Snoke, can’t say I’m sorry. Wondered where you got off to, if you might come home, eventually.”

“Ben?” Rey said, looking up at him and registering the similarities between the two men. Same height, same build, same swagger. “You’re Ben Solo? _The_ Ben Solo? I thought he was dead.”

“Yeah, he’s Ben Solo,” Han answered for him. “My prodigal son, back from the underworld. Whatcha got there?” He gestured to the bundle slung across Ben’s shoulder.

“That’s Plutt,” Rey answered defiantly, holding her chin up and moving back between the two men. “I asked Ben to take care of him for me, and he has. What are you going to do about it?”

Han chuckled and held his hands up. “Now, now, don’t be hasty. Plutt had it coming to him, I suppose. He’s always been a right bastard. This mean you need a new job? I still have an opening at the Pawn Shop with your name on it.”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Maybe? The town still needs a garage, though.”

Han shrugged. “We got time. Where you going now?”

Ben answered. “Into the woods. I hear it’s lovely down there, tonight.”

“Got room for one more? Feeling antsy, I could use a walk.”

Rey and Ben exchanged a glance. “Sure, Dad. Come on - it’s not too far.” 

Han stepped up between them and Rey took his arm, and the three of them walked together into the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> He's a spider kind of thing, although he's shaped like a human, for the most part.
> 
> If you like this story, check out my other [horror and dark fics](). You might also check out [areychnophilia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24583210) by VeriLee, Rey is the spider monster in that one and it's very sexy. If you really like spiders you might also check out [Entomological Pursuits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20034382/chapters/47441533) by bugs_not_bunny, especially chapter three. Mind the tags!
> 
> Yes, the title is from The Teddy Bears' Picnic.
> 
> I am flowerofcarrots on Twitter if you want to yell with me about Ugly Kylo.


End file.
